until Saturday July 28 2012

Galerie Michel Rein
T : 33 01 42 72 68 13
42 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
France

F : 33 01 42 72 81 94
galerie@michelrein.com
www.michelrein.com

Can art teach us something about the space in which we live ?

The exhibition "Ici", organised in parallel with the exhibition "Là-bas" at the Maison européenne de la photographie, allows us to discover intriguing spaces, the far off, places which are far and beyond what we know but which somehow seem localisable. These types of utopias which have a precise and real location yet are from an indeterminable time, were named heterotopias by Michel Foucault.

The videos presented at the Galerie Michel Rein invite the visitor to question art's heterotopic function, by showing places which put up a protest, both mythical and real, against all spaces, in particular the one in which we live. These artistic counter-spaces llow for the possibility to escape for a moment from the here and now, the oppressive ''ici''. They are against places and are destined to nutralise and purify them, almost to delete them.

To help us better understand the concept of localised utopias, Michel Foucault reminds us that our existence is inscribed in relation with places, making reference to our childhood memories, taking for example our parents bed. "On this large bed we discover the ocean as we can swim between the covers, it is the sky as we can bounce on the springs, its a forest as we hide in it, the night as we become ghosts between the sheets, it is pleasure, or at least until the parents come home and we are to be punished."* Our parents's large bed is also certainly an American Indian's tent where the chief comes to organise the resistance against the cow-boys.

Putting up tents all along the main road in Tel-Aviv is exactly what thousands of the population did during the summer of 2011 to show their indignation at those in charge and their desire to change the social system of the country. Could we call that a protest of a heterotopia?(…)

The goal of this exhibition was to show the ''elsewhere" created by artists, like so many heterotopias, in the "ici" (the here and now) that the would like to see changed. As the boat was for Michel Foucault, contemporary art is for us, the large reservoir of the imagination. All cultures form their heterotopias but each one in varying ways. It's the merit of the artists which shows us and allows us into secret place. From that moment, everyone is free to modify their here, their "ici".

Marie Shek, mai 2012

With the support of Fondation d'entreprise Ricard

In parallel with the exhibition " Là-bas " , With Yael Bartana, Nir Evron, Talya Keinan, Daniel Landau, Sigalit Landau, Nira Pereg, Tom Pnini, Tamir Tzadok, Rona Yefamn (cur. Marie Shek), Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

Galerie Michel Rein